Kiev ends ceasefire at MH17 crash site

Members of a group of international experts inspect wreckage at the site where the downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed, near the village of Hrabove (Grabovo) in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine August 1, 2014.(Reuters / Sergei Karpukhin) / Reuters

Kiev has suspended a ceasefire with the self-defense forces at the site of the Malaysian Airlines plane crash in eastern Ukraine, after the international recovery team searching for victims halted their efforts over security concerns.

"The ceasefire in the plane crash zone, announced by the
President of Ukraine at the request of international experts,
which has been thoroughly observed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces,
will not be in place at the beginning of the second phase of the
investigation," the Ukrainian government said in a statement
on Thursday.

This comes after The Netherlands, who lead the international
probe, announced it was halting the mission to recover victims
and debris of the July 17 MH17 crash because of fighting between
Ukrainian forces and rebels in the area.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that the risk posed to the team of
Australian, Dutch and Malaysian experts working in the area was
too great to continue the operation under current conditions.

“The security situation in eastern Ukraine and the MH17 crash
site has worsened by the day,” Rutte told journalists in The
Hague, as cited by Reuters. “That is making it impossible for
experts to do their work.”

Experts will resume their efforts once the situation allows,
Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans wrote on his Facebook
page, reported RIA Novosti.

The suspension of the ceasefire in the MH17 crash area is a
direct violation of the UN resolution, Russia's UN envoy, Vitaly
Churkin, told reporters on Thursday.

“The truce was approved by the UN Security Council resolution
2166, thus it is a clear violation of the resolution and will
have very serious consequences for international inspectors'
abilities to conduct the investigation when they decide to return
to the area,” Churkin said.

Russia’s efforts at the UN to reinstate the ceasefire at the
crash site were blocked by Western states.

“It was blocked the usual way,” Churkin said, adding
that Lithuania, the US, and Australia began proposing
inappropriate amendments to the text.

Meanwhile, Kiev officials put the blame for the situation on the
self-defense troops.

A Ukrainian defense spokesman said earlier the Army was not
carrying out any military action within 20 km (12 miles) of the
plane crash site, according to Reuters.

The government claims that the international mission has been
halted because of “terrorists’ provocations” who
“posed threats to the lives” of the recovery mission
members.

The international investigating team arrived at the site days after the tragic incident
due to security reasons.

The decision to suspend the operation “must have been very
difficult” particularly given that experts had waited “a long time to finally go to the
site” and spent only “a few short days there,”
Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the OSCE Special Monitoring
Mission to Ukraine told ABC News. But over the past two or three
days the situation has become untenable as “there was live
fire” and “yesterday [there was] shooting very close by
the experts.”

Answering to the question on whether it was the rebel troops who
were to blame for the situation, Bociurkiw said “we were
unable to establish where the fire or shelling actually came
from.”

“We are not pointing fingers - that is not our job. But we
are very, very disappointed that the behavior caused suspension
of the mission,” he said.

A lot more work remains to be done in the investigation of the
tragedy, but the question now is “what will actually happen
to this debris lying out there in the field unguarded,” the
OSCE spokesperson said.

“The worst possible scenario is for that crash site, that big
crime scene to be caught in the middle of [fighting],” he
believes.

In July, The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution
calling for an international investigation into the MH17 incident
and demanded safe access to the site for investigators.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced a unilateral
ceasefire in a 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) area around the site of
the crash. However, shelling and fighting in the area has
continued, hampering the experts' work several times in the past
weeks.

Currently, at least three areas containing the Boeing-777’s
debris remain unexamined by the international mission, according
to the Ukrainian government. The majority of experts will leave
Ukraine until a decision on resuming the operation is made, it
said in a statement.